Job Description: Chief Content Officer

CMI first described the Chief Content Officer (CCO) job greater than a decade in the past.

In these days, corporations wanted senior leaders to spearhead the mixing of “content marketing activities” into extra conventional advertising campaigns.

Today, content material management should develop past advertising (even content material advertising) to embody an all-communication technique.

That means at present’s chief content material officer (no matter whether or not that’s the title the individual holds) guides the content material that makes up each expertise a buyer, viewers member, or prospect has with a model.

What does that appear like in follow? I’ll clarify and supply a chief content material officer job description you may copy.

First, although, let’s take a look at the context of what’s modified – as a result of that informs the scope of the brand new content material chief function.

Today’s chief content officer guides the #content that makes up every customer experience, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. #ContentMarketing Click To Tweet

How it began: Content serves advertising

When we final up to date our view on the chief content material officer function, we described it inside a content material advertising context. Most individuals who carried out that operate held titles like vice chairman of content material advertising, head of content material advertising, editor-in-chief, and even chief storyteller.

Few held the “chief” title, as few corporations thought of content material a c-suite operate (like finance, operations, know-how, or advertising).

A number of services and products manufacturers – particularly those who have constructed separate content material or media operations – have adopted the CCO title (Peloton, Dun & Bradstreet, and Ralph Lauren, for instance). Goldman Sachs, AirBnB, and Procter & Gamble have comparable roles however name them vice chairman of content material, head of content material, or chief media officer.

The chief content material officers in these organizations deal with the artistic facet of content material product improvement. In media corporations, the CCO is the main artistic voice for the model’s product technique. In product and providers manufacturers, the content material chief is more likely to run the strategic initiative of a media division or head up a targeted operate of artistic providers.

But content material technique isn’t a separate division at most manufacturers. Nor is it separated from the gross sales and advertising group.

That should change. And it’s beginning to.

Almost a 12 months in the past, I wrote about how content material technique and advertising technique are coming collectively. I requested the query:

What if content material and advertising as a follow … was handled as necessary within the enterprise as its present services or products?

And why shouldn’t or not it’s? Content makes up the whole lot of communications from any firm.

Today, nearly everybody within the group communicates straight with audiences, reminiscent of clients, companions, press, analysts, and workers.

How it’s going: Content significance skyrockets

We’ve moved past the necessity to combine content material advertising into the broader advertising ecosystem. That occurred.

Consider this: 71% of entrepreneurs in our current B2B analysis stated content material is extra necessary to their organizations than it was a 12 months in the past.

Content is a enterprise technique at present. Full cease.

But that merger of selling content material, content material advertising, and content material operations I discussed? It’s created a urgent want to arrange and coordinate not solely what advertising markets but in addition what gross sales sells, accounts service, PR relates, and HR recruits.

As a end result, content material management appears to be like totally different going ahead. Here’s how:

The content material chief (whether or not referred to as chief content material officer or not) should personal communication technique. The content material operate isn’t an inside, on-demand content material merchandising machine for the remainder of the enterprise – it’s a strategic contributor to each buyer expertise with the enterprise.

The chief content material officer should lead all operational content material approaches, together with content material advertising, content material operations, branded content material, native promoting, and the rest that drives the creation of media-powered buyer experiences as a enterprise technique.

The CCO should set lead (and measure) experiences that align with and contribute to enterprise targets. The content material crew of at present and tomorrow builds audiences by means of owned media experiences that may be monetized in a number of methods. They drive the execution of content material for short-term promoting campaigns. They drive engagement and shares on social media and natural search site visitors from progressive earned media and word-of-mouth methods. But in addition they help visibility, transparency, and inside communication of the content material lifecycle – from ideation to creation, administration, activation, promotion, and even archiving. And the CCO leads the event of the infrastructure required to do all of that.

The CCO leads content material for each a part of the shopper’s journey. The content material operate shouldn’t be relegated to top-of-funnel gross sales enablement belongings. It’s not restricted to Search engine optimisation-focused articles driving model consciousness. It’s not restricted to customer-support how-to movies or buyer occasions. The content material operate holds the experience to ship viewers worth at each stage of the shopper journey. And the chief content material officer guides the appliance of that experience throughout the corporate.

Whether you name the function chief content material officer, vice chairman of content material, head of content material, or one thing else issues lower than the operate of the place.

Here are the brand new necessities for the place. Feel free to repeat this description to advocate for a CCO at your model. You can even use it to information your personal improvement if the highest content material place is your purpose.

Job description: Chief content material officer

Definition/description

The chief content material officer is a key member of the senior administration crew. The CCO leads the executive, operational, and artistic features of content material as a strategic advertising and communications operate within the enterprise.

Reports to

Chief government officer/chief working officer or chief advertising officer/VP of selling

Position abstract

The CCO’s purpose is to safe the creation, coordination, consistency, and worth of content material as a aggressive benefit for the enterprise.

The CCO oversees all advertising and communications content material initiatives, each inside and exterior, throughout a number of platforms and codecs to drive worth to each the enterprise and the audiences served.

This particular person will need to have management expertise in artistic technique, coordinated content material operations, channel optimization, model consistency, viewers segmentation, translation/localization, and significant measurement of content material’s worth to the enterprise.

The place is the chief of a content material operation that collaborates throughout a number of organizational departments – together with public relations, communications, advertising, customer support, IT, gross sales, human sources, and government management. Thus, the CCO ought to anticipate to have a hand in defining, governing, and deploying the general model’s communication method.

Responsibilities

The CCO owns all operational initiatives concerning the creation, administration, activation, and measurement of content material.

The CCO’s main duty is to find out the working mannequin and content material method that can provide the best worth for the group, after which lead its administrative, operational, and artistic features.

• Design and implement content material methods, plans, and procedures that help and lengthen advertising and communications initiatives, each quick and long-term, and set up a repeatedly evolving content material follow
• Set complete targets for efficiency and development for content material as a strategic operate within the enterprise
• Leverage market knowledge to develop content material themes/subjects, then execute a plan to create the belongings that help a viewpoint and result in important behavioral metrics
• Supervise the administration and upkeep of viewers personas, content material inventories and audits, buyer journey maps, Search engine optimisation methods, and aggressive audits
• Establish requirements, programs, greatest practices, and workflow processes for managing the content material lifecycle, together with requesting, producing, distributing, selling, measuring, and retiring content material, together with guaranteeing all content material is in keeping with model, type, high quality, tone of voice, and optimized for the assorted consumer experiences and throughout all applicable channels
• Collaborate with the corporate’s senior artistic crew leaders and channel house owners on all initiatives to determine content material wants and alternatives to make sure effectivity and consistency throughout channels, verticals, and useful departments
• Work with the corporate’s technical/digital groups to implement an environment friendly content material administration system (CMS), digital asset administration method, and different important know-how programs (e.g., advertising automation, e mail administration, social media administration, analytics, and so on.)
• Create an organizational construction and rent/supervise leaders in all content material verticals; handle the efforts of different crew’s writers, editors, producers, and content material managers
• Conduct ongoing usability exams to gauge content material effectiveness; Gather knowledge and deal with analytics (or supervise those that do) and make suggestions primarily based on these outcomes; work with house owners of content material to revise and measure content material and advertising targets
• Establish efficiency targets and oversee ongoing measurement protocols to judge and optimize content material effectiveness. This consists of gathering knowledge and dealing with analytics (or supervising those who do), in addition to making suggestions primarily based on efficiency outcomes
• Ensure a constant world, enterprise-wide method for content material, together with implementing taxonomies, meta tag buildings, structured content material, and localization/translation methods the place applicable
• Participate in content material growth actions (investments, acquisitions, alliances, and so on.)

Success indicators

Performance expectations needs to be primarily based on the continuous enchancment of buyer nurturing, changing, and retention by means of storytelling and will increase in new prospects introduced into the enterprise by means of constant improvement and deployment of content material.

The main standards for achievement are buyer and worker affinity, measured by lifetime buyer worth, buyer satisfaction, and worker advocacy. Additional standards for gauging success could embrace:

• Positive model recognition and message consistency throughout chosen printed channels
• Gains in outlined buyer engagement metrics (measured by customers taking the specified motion – conversions, subscriptions, purchases, and so on.)
• Website and social media site visitors development
• Conversion metrics definition and development
• Improvements in constructive social media sentiment
• Positive buyer suggestions and survey knowledge
• Increases in vital search engine key phrase rankings
• Reductions within the time it takes clients to maneuver by means of the gross sales/shopping for cycle
• Creation of recent up-sell and cross-sell alternatives by means of content material evaluation and utility
• A stronger enterprise-wide deal with driving gross sales, saving prices or creating happier clients by means of content material

What we overlooked of the CCO description

You may discover that we omitted some issues often included in job descriptions: schooling necessities and years of expertise.

No one faculty diploma covers every thing you’ll want to be a CCO at present. A liberal arts diploma may assist. So may a communications, journalism, or advertising background. Then once more, experience in your group’s business may matter extra.

Similarly, the variety of years of expertise most likely issues lower than what somebody discovered and achieved throughout these years.

Does your group have a job that handles all these duties? What would you add or change about this record? Let me know within the feedback.

Cover picture by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute